Page:Ruth Fielding at Lighthouse Point.djvu/135

Rh afaid [sic] yet, how will she feel when she awakes in the night and remembers what might have been?"

Nevertheless, the girl from the Red Mill did not allow her secret to disturb her cheerfulness. She hid any feeling she might have had against The Fox. When they all met at dinner on the Miraflame, she merely laughed and joked about her accident, and passed around dainty bits of the baked tautog that Phineas had prepared especially for her.

That fisherman's chowder was a marvel, and altogether he proved to be as good a cook as Heavy had declared. The boys had caught several bass, and they caught more after dinner. But those were saved to take home. The girls, however, had had enough fishing. Ruth's experience frightened them away from the slippery rocks.

Mary Cox was certainly a very strange sort of a girl; but her present attitude did not surprise Ruth. Mary had, soon after Ruth entered Briarwood Hall, taken a dislike to the younger girl. Ruth's new club—the Sweetbriars—had drawn almost all the new girls in the school, as well as many of Mary's particular friends; while the Up and Doing Club, of which Mary was the leading spirit, was not alone frowned upon by Mrs. Tellingham and her assistants, but lost members until—as Helen Cameron had said—the last meeting